Professional Trained Naturalist/Wilderness Guides
Mark Denzer - Operations Manager
Mark has worked in the wilderness guide industry for over 20 years and has lead trips in Missouri Ozarks, the Rocky Mountains in Idaho, Boundary Waters in Minnesota, the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, the swamps of Louisiana and his homeland of the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois. He spends his time exploring Illinois's & Missouri's rivers, their ancient history, wild-crafting, studying and practicing primitive living skills. He has received training and worked for several outdoor wilderness programs in the country including, The Trails of Awareness Project, Wilderness Education Association , Wingate Wilderness Therapy of Utah, SUWS of Idaho, Sol-treks, Touch of Nature, Wilderness Awareness School, and Boulder Outdoor Survival School. He has a Master’s Degree in Outdoor/ Therapeutic Recreation Management at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He is currently a certified Wilderness First Responder under the national school of Wilderness Medical Associates.
Tony Gerard - Naturalist/ Biologists/ Historian
Tony is a professor of Biology at Shawnee Community College and grew up canoeing the Cache river. One of his interests is the study and preservation of reptiles and amphibians locally and globally. Additional, he has been involved in living history since the early 1980s, with a particular interest in the eastern frontier of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Gerard has given seminars on first person interpretation at various historic sites throughout the US and Canada, including Colonial Williamsburg, Fortress Louisburg, Fort Loudon, and Fort Toulouse. He has served as a technical advisor, casting, set dressing, and location scout for numerous History Channel productions (over 30 to date) and was a core extra in the motion picture Last of the Mohicans and the recent PBS production The War That Made America.​